Ingevity is a global manufacturer of specialty chemicals and high-performance carbon materials, headquartered in North Charleston, South Carolina, USA. As its global operations continue to expand, Ingevity has established multiple entities in China and the Asia-Pacific region. Against the backdrop of deepening global expansion, the complexity of human resources management has increased: labor laws, compensation systems, and individual income tax policies vary significantly across different countries and regions, and the traditional HR management model—which operates on a per-entity basis and relies on localized operations—has gradually revealed its limitations.

CDP partnered with Ingevity on the “Global HR Digital Integration and Upgrade” project, delivering a solid solution. This article details how we transformed challenges into action, achieving a leap forward in comprehensive compliance, cost reduction, efficiency gains, and enhanced employee experience—making HR a dual engine for improving employee experience and driving business growth.

I. Three Major Challenges on the Path to Globalization

At the project’s inception, the CDP and Ingevity teams worked side by side on the front lines. Through multiple rounds of research and process mapping, they jointly identified three key challenges to the efficient operation of global HR:

Challenge 1: Fragmented Systems Hinder Data Interoperability
Regional entities use locally-based HR systems that lack effective connectivity. When the group needs to understand overall labor costs, talent structure, or turnover in key positions, it often requires significant manpower to collect and organize data across regions, making it difficult to ensure data timeliness and consistency.

Challenge 2: Risk management complexity increases with business expansion
Labor laws and tax policies in various countries are constantly evolving. When operating in multiple locations, companies must simultaneously track numerous regulatory updates and ensure local operations comply with regional requirements. As the business footprint expands, the complexity of these operational risks continues to rise.

Challenge 3: Insufficient process standardization impacts efficiency
Since each entity develops its own operational procedures, the same type of task may be handled differently across regions. This not only increases communication costs for cross-regional collaboration but also leads to inconsistent experiences for employees when transferring between entities or accessing group-wide services.

In light of these issues, Ingevity recognized that achieving efficient global collaboration and manageable risk requires a systematic upgrade of its human resources management system. The core objective is to build a unified, data-integrated digital management platform capable of adapting to the requirements of each country.

To this end, Ingevity partnered with CDP to jointly advance a global HR digital integration and upgrade project based on the framework of “a unified platform, a unified vendor, and a unified service level agreement.”

II. Breaking the Deadlock: Three Key Pillars to Unlock Global HR Digitalization

Based on initial insights, CDP and Ingevity tailored an end-to-end solution—from platform and services to implementation—to drive the evolution of HR value from daily task processing toward a strategic core.

1. Platform Integration—Building a Global Digital Foundation

CDP deployed a unified HR management platform for Ingevity covering multiple entities across the Asia-Pacific region, integrating core modules such as global payroll processing, multi-country individual tax engines, attendance and leave management, and employee master data management. The platform adopts a highly flexible architecture capable of adapting to differences in payroll rules, individual tax algorithms, and leave policies across countries. Through a unified data interface, the platform connects with attendance systems in mainland China and existing systems at overseas entities, enabling the automatic flow of organizational master data, employee information, attendance records, and payroll results across the unified platform. This eliminates the previous issues of scattered data and manual maintenance, laying the technical foundation for global collaborative operations.

2. Process Automation to Enhance Efficiency and Employee Experience

Built on a unified platform, the CDP integrates core modules such as payroll, attendance, and personal income tax to close the process loop, enabling end-to-end automated processing. The system automatically collects attendance data, calculates payroll and deducts personal income tax, generates documents, and pushes them for approval. This significantly shortens the accounting cycle, freeing up HR teams to focus on higher-value tasks.

At the employee level, the unified portal provides a self-service portal supporting operations such as pay stub inquiries, leave requests, attendance reviews, and information updates. The system automatically sends reminders and guidance at key milestones—such as onboarding, probationary period completion, and contract renewals—ensuring employees experience consistent and standardized employer care through their daily interactions.

3. Seamless Migration, Ensuring Zero-Risk Business Implementation

Upgrading and migrating HR systems carries significant risks, particularly for core functions such as payroll. CDP designed a meticulous migration assurance plan for Ingevity : At the data migration level, historical data was comprehensively reviewed and cleaned to ensure the accuracy and completeness of data imported into the new platform; prior to the system switchover, multiple rounds of parallel testing were conducted, with calculation results compared item by item until error-free; Regarding process adaptation, we collaborated with regional HR leaders to flexibly adjust platform configurations to meet local requirements; regarding service assurance, both parties signed a unified Service Level Agreement (SLA), with CDP assigning a dedicated support team to provide 24/7 response, ensuring issues are addressed immediately. Through these measures, Ingevity completed the system migration with zero business disruption, steadily entering a new phase of digital management.

III. Results: Co-Creating a New Global Vision for HR Digitalization

After months of close collaboration and co-creation, the global HR digitalization integration and upgrading project between CDP and Ingevity has successfully landed. This is not only a technical system update, but also a systematic reconstruction of HR management process and service model. From the actual operation effect, the project has made significant progress in the following three aspects:

1. Full Compliance: Achieving Payroll 100% Compliance and a Smooth Platform Transition

Following the launch of the new platform, payroll calculations and individual income tax filings for all Ingevity entities in the Asia-Pacific region are now processed through a unified platform. The platform’s built-in multi-country tax rule engine ensures that operations in each region comply with local regulatory requirements. During the project transition, all payroll disbursements were accurate and error-free, with no delays or errors resulting from the system upgrade, achieving the goal of “zero-risk” operations.

2. Cost Reduction and Efficiency Improvement: Driving the HR Team’s Transition from Daily Tasks to Business-Driven Roles

Through the SaaS platform and AI-driven automation, a significant volume of repetitive administrative tasks has been automated. Take payroll processing as an example: tasks that previously required multiple HR staff members and took several days to complete can now be swiftly handled using automated tools. This improvement in operational efficiency directly translates to cost savings. Freed from tedious administrative work, the HR team can dedicate more time to collaborating with business units and engaging in activities such as talent planning and organizational effectiveness analysis, gradually transitioning from a support function to a business-driven role.

3. Employee Experience: Strengthening Employer Branding and Solidifying the Digital Foundation

Following the launch of a unified employee self-service platform, inquiries have become more convenient, process handling more transparent, and response times faster, resulting in a significant increase in employee satisfaction with HR services. Corporate care and corporate culture are naturally conveyed through digital interactions, reinforcing the employer brand image. At the same time, the process and employee data accumulated during the platform’s operation provide foundational resources for future management optimization and intelligent applications—for example, historical data can be used to analyze turnover patterns in key positions and predict talent demand trends, thereby providing data-driven support for human resources planning.

IV. Conclusion: From Integration to Convergence—A Digital-Driven Management Leap

The collaboration between Ingevity and CDP demonstrates a viable path for corporate human resource management to evolve from fragmentation to integration, and from integration to convergence in a globalized context: grounded in a unified platform, driven by the dual engines of compliance and efficiency, and centered on the employee experience as the focal point of value, human resources will truly become a strategic engine that underpins the company’s global strategy and unleashes new momentum for the organization and its talent.